Deutsche Telekom AG and Nvidia Corp. officially opened a new data center in Munich on Wednesday, a project valued at €1 billion ($1.2 billion) that company officials and government representatives described as a major addition to Germany's digital infrastructure.
Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil attended the inauguration. He framed the facility as central to the country’s economic strategy, saying, "For me, it’s particularly important that technological leadership must be at the core of Germany’s future business model."
The Munich installation is presented as one of Europe's largest sites tailored to support technology that can run complex artificial-intelligence systems. Klingbeil emphasized the center's role in strengthening national capacity to operate advanced digital services, calling it "an important pillar for the German and European AI ecosystem" that "strengthens digital sovereignty."
German software company SAP SE will supply platforms and applications for the new facility, providing software components intended to run within the center's infrastructure. The participation of major corporations alongside visible government backing was highlighted as evidence of a broader strategy to cultivate an AI ecosystem within Germany.
The involvement of these industry players and support at the ministerial level was described by officials as part of a concerted effort to build an AI environment capable of competing with the United States and China. The project was presented as a tangible demonstration of the country's commitment to expanding domestic capacity for advanced computing and AI workloads.
Context and implications
Officials at the ceremony conveyed that the Munich site is more than a physical data center: it is positioned as infrastructure designed to underpin AI development and deployment in Germany and across Europe. The combination of a telecommunications operator, a chip and systems company, and enterprise software support reflects a cross-sector collaboration aimed at delivering computing power alongside application-level services.
Details on operational timelines, capacity metrics, and customer rosters were not disclosed at the event. Observers and stakeholders will look to subsequent announcements for more granular technical and commercial information.